Arctic Storm Rising Dale Brown (literature books to read TXT) 📖

Seated inside the PAK-DA’s cockpit, Colonel Alexei Petrov plugged his portable computer into the stealth bomber’s secure communicationssystem and powered it up. Then he entered a code sequence provided by Pavel Voronin weeks ago. The screen flickered oddlyfor several seconds and then stabilized to show Voronin’s face. Although the background was blurred out, Dmitri Grishin’stop troubleshooter appeared relaxed and confident, as always.

“It’s good to see you, Alexei,” Voronin said with a faint smile. “Even if you do look like shit.”

Petrov laughed bitterly. “If I do, at least I have a good excuse. You try getting any sleep in the middle of the worst fuckingblizzard anyone’s ever seen! Between the wind, the goddamned dark, and the balls-freezing cold, this place isn’t exactly arest camp, you know. I spend half my waking hours out there with Bondarovich and the rest of your security team, fixing windand ice damage to our tents and the aircraft shelter. And the other half checking over this bomber’s electronics and othersystems to make sure everything’s still working right.”

“You have my sympathies,” Voronin said insincerely. He shrugged. “On the other hand, all this terrible weather is perfectfor our purposes, true?”

“True,” Petrov allowed. Then he frowned. “But the same conditions that make us hard to find also make it impossible for me to take off again. These strong northerly crosswinds from out of the mountains basically pin my aircraft in place.”

Voronin waved that away. “This storm will pass soon enough. Maybe even sometime in the next twenty-four hours. Or so the meteorologistspromise.” He shrugged his shoulders again. “Besides, where would you go right now?”

Petrov dodged answering what the other man only meant as a rhetorical question. What he ultimately planned and what he wantedVoronin and his oligarch employer to know were two very different things. He scowled. “That’s another thing, Pavel. Why haven’twe heard anything from Zhdanov or the Americans yet? What the devil are they waiting for? By now, they have to understandthat we’re not bullshitting here. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s just my nerves that are starting to fray.Your ex-Spetsnaz commandos are getting pretty edgy, too.”

“Patience, Alexei,” the other man said coolly. “You can’t expect politicians to part with such large sums of money so easily.Both sides just need a little more time to come to terms with the unpleasant reality they face. Once they understand thatpaying us is the only way to get control of the stealth bomber you’ve stolen, they’ll cough up fast enough.”

Petrov eyed him narrowly. “Do you have any proof of that?”

Voronin nodded. “My sources indicate that pressure is mounting on both Moscow and Washington. Soon enough, one side or theother will realize the silly-ass military games they’re playing are counterproductive and very, very dangerous . . . and thatmeeting your stated price is the much-safer and much-easier option.”

“I hope you’re right,” Petrov said tightly.

Voronin laughed. “Don’t worry, Alexei. All you and the others need to do right now is keep your heads down for a little while longer. Except for those couple of minor glitches in the beginning, everything’s gone according to plan.” His expression turned slightly more serious. “Along those lines, though, has your unwanted passenger General Mavrichev’s body turned up yet?”

Petrov shook his head. “Not yet. We took advantage of a short break in the storm yesterday to mount a quick search. Unfortunately,Bondarovich’s men couldn’t find any sign of him or the snowmobile before the weather closed in again.”

“But you’re sure he’s dead?”

“Completely sure,” Petrov said flatly. “Between the bullet I put in his back and the subzero temperatures, Mavrichev was effectivelya corpse the moment he disappeared into the night. Even if it took him a while to die, there’s nowhere he could have goneto find help. Not with the nearest village more than a hundred kilometers away.”

Voronin nodded. “Good,” he said with a pleased smile. “Then that’s one less complication for us to worry about.” He lookedmore closely at Petrov. “In the meantime, do your best to relax, Colonel—despite the hellish conditions. Think about the ratherlarge fortune you’re about to make, instead.”

“Yes, because that will keep me warm when I’m outside freezing my ass off in the wind and trying to tie down another fuckingcamouflage panel that’s ripped loose for the hundredth time,” Petrov snapped sourly.

“It can’t hurt, though, can it?” the other man said, not hiding his amusement. “Anyway, I’ll contact you as soon as I haveany news. For now, Voronin out.” The screen went blank.

Impatiently, Petrov disconnected his computer from the PAK-DA’s instrument panel and closed it down. Grishin and his suaveassistant must think he was a complete fool, he thought in irritation, or else made blind by the prospect of riches and thepower that wealth conveyed. Well, maybe that wasn’t so surprising. Both the oligarch and Voronin were driven themselves bythe desire for ever-greater wealth and power . . . and like many civilians they mistakenly believed the two things were oneand the same.

But real power came in many different forms, Petrov knew. Soon enough, he would prove that—not just to Grishin and Voronin, but to the whole world.

Somewhere inside the back of his skull, he felt another wave of pressure building up. With a grimace, he shook out anothercouple of pain pills and forced himself to choke them down.

Then, oppressed by the sudden feeling that his time might be even shorter than he’d supposed, Petrov leaned forward and activatedthe PAK-DA’s navigation system. One of the bomber’s large multifunction displays lit up. Several more quick taps on the glowingtouch screen retrieved an intricate mission plan that he’d been devising ever since he’d learned about the tumor growing insidehis brain. Fittingly, he’d named this plan Vikhr, Whirlwind—after a malignant wind spirit in Russian folklore. And the day was fast approaching, he knew, when he would sowthe wind, and leave millions of others to suffer the whirlwind that must follow in his wake. Almost obsessively, he startedworking through the plan again, checking and rechecking his calculations for flight times and fuel consumption.

Twenty-Five

Kaktovik, Alaska

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